S. Shariff et al., Hepatitis C infection and B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in British Columbia: A cross-sectional analysis, ANN ONCOL, 10(8), 1999, pp. 961-964
Objectives: To determine the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infectio
n in patients with B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) in British Columbia.
Design: A cross-sectional analysis.
Setting: The British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA), a Canadian provincial t
ertiary oncology referral center.
Subjects: Consecutive patients with B-cell NHL registered onto the BCCA lym
phoma database in 1996 and part of 1997 and a control group of patients wit
h T-cell NHL registered on the database from 1995 through 1997. Patients wi
th HIV infection were excluded from the analysis. A second control group (n
= 1085) consisted of health-care workers tested for HCV infection followin
g a needle-stick injury.
Interventions: Stored sera from patients with B-cell NHL (n= 88) and T-cell
NHL (n = 37), identified from the database, were tested for the presence o
f HCV infection with commercially available serologic tests.
Main outcome measures: HCV seropositivity in the B-cell lymphoma group comp
ared to the control groups (T-cell NHL and health-care workers).
Results: 2.3% of the B-cell NHL group, none of the T-cell NHL group and 1%
of the health-care worker control group were positive for HCV infection. Th
ese results were not statistically significantly different.
Conclusion: Patients in British Columbia with B-cell NHL do not have an inc
reased prevalence of HCV infection. These data suggest that the lymphotroph
ism of HCV may differ by regional, racial and genotypic variations around t
he world.